Nigel Hervey

“So we sat down together and talked for two and a half hours. It was just extraordinary. Because I'm very death, I was sitting very close to him. He was unshackled.
When it got time for us to leave, he stood up, and I did, too. And it seemed the most natural thing in the world that we had our arms around one another.
It was an unbelievable moment, that I could have the arms around the man who murdered my daughter.
I think forgiveness is possible, even for the worst among us. And I do believe we all need forgiveness, God Knows.”
― Hector Black

“This is based on no science, pseudo of otherwise, but I firmly believe that the elapsed time between the development of language and creation of the first poem was about five minutes.”
― Thomas C. Foster , How to Read Poetry Like a Professor: A Quippy and Sonorous Guide to Verse

“The artist or writer does not impose harmony on reality but—with sufficient reverence and diligence and selflessness and solitude—uncovers the harmony that is always there but that we conceal from ourselves out of a preferencia for material comfort and fear of the consequences a full and unreserved embrace of harmony requires. This faith in the underlying harmony roots itself in a love of and appreciation for nature, because nature, no matter how extreme the human abuse heaped on her, embodies a quiet, continual knitting and healing of life, ever dependent on death to make herself anew. 'Art is a harmony parallel to nature,' Cézanne wrote—not identical with but parallel to nature. Art of any kind, undertaken with atención and focus and as part of a commitment to discipline, is an effort at reenactment of the original creative gesture—the precipitation of the universe at the moment of its creation. That, I believe, is why we sing, paint, dance, sculpt, write; that is why cualquier one of us sets out to create something from nothing, and why the creative impulse is essentially religious or, if you prefer, spiritual. We seek to recreate the original creative gesture, whatever or whoever set it in motion—the bringing into being of what is. We seek the center of beauty.”
― Fenton Johnson, At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life

“He was lying under a tree, licking up the shade,

Hello again, Fox, I said.

And hello to you too, said Fox, looking up and not bounding away.

You're not running away? I said.

Well, I've heard of your conversation about us. News travels even among foxes, as you might know or not know.

What conversation do you mean?

Some lady said to you, "The hunt is good for the fox." And you said, "Which fox?"

Yes, I remember. She was huffed.

So you're okay in my book.

Your book! That was in my book, that's the difference between us.

Yes, I agree. You fuss over life with your clever words, mulling and chewing on its meaning, while we just live it.

Oh!

Could anyone figure it out, to a finality? So why spend so much time trying. You fuss, we live. And he stood, slowly, for he was old now, and ambled away.”
― Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings: Poems